The Rock Reflects On His Transformation To Star In The Smashing Machine

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson recently spoke about transforming himself to play Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine and more. The Mark Kerr biopic releases on October 3rd, and Johnson spoke with Variety for a new interview promoting the film. You can see the highlights below:

On what made him decide he had to do this role: “I feel like this has, for me, been brewing inside of me for some time — just this idea of: ‘Wait, I think I can do more. I feel like I want to do more.’ And then it comes… and then I’m going to do it with Benny Safdie. And then I start to get a little cold feet — ‘Wait, can I do more?’ You know?

“But you’re right about needing that person to say, ‘Hey, not only can you, and I believe you can, but walk down this road with me and see what I see.’ And here’s the cliff. Jump off. Hopefully the parachute opens. But he was like, ‘I got you, though,’ right? That was the thing. ‘I got you.’ There’s the cliff, there’s the ocean of waves — it seems like you can’t swim them — but he said, ‘I got you.’”

On the core story being about ‘a man fighting himself’: “Yes, that’s real life, I feel. That’s what Benny wanted to make. He wanted to make a movie about human vulnerability and real life. It’s easier and sexier to go after, ‘Hey, he’s fighting for the championship of the world. He wins it, he gets everything — money, fame.’ But this version? This is before UFC became the UFC. MMA was just starting.

“You had a guy in Mark Kerr — this beast of a human being. A walking contradiction: the most lethal on the planet, but also the sweetest, tender, and kind. From Benny’s perspective, he felt like the good thing about our movie is, if we do it right, he works his ass off for everything — and he loses. Not only does he lose… sorry to spoil it a bit — but he loses everything. And ODs twice. He’s lucky to be alive. That speaks to Benny’s DNA. He loses everything, but at the end, it’s okay. At the end, it wins.”

On his physical transformation for the role: “This transformation was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. There was a physical transformation, prosthetics, vocal transformation — he has a very specific way of talking. When I first got together with Benny, we watched tapes of Mark, and Benny said, ‘I want to film this and never cut away from you.’ I knew what that meant. He said, ‘I don’t want to cut away. I want to shoot this cinéma vérité, with a prowling camera. You have a great stunt double, but I don’t want to use him.’ So I said, ‘Okay. If Mark gets punched, I’m getting punched.’

“Then he says, ‘DJ, I don’t know if anyone’s told you this… but you need to gain weight.’ I went, ‘Okay.’ I felt that too. Give me 24 hours. I came back, and we looked at Mark again — and realized, his body is a unicorn. I had to put on 30 pounds. Benny said he wanted me to look a bit “puffy,” and I agreed. But it’s not just gaining weight. It’s putting on a quality of muscle that has fast-twitch capacity. He’s a wrestler. It’s not about bodybuilding. I’ve never done so much trap and neck work in my life. Old-school wrestlers with no necks? That’s what I had to do. And I held that weight for three and a half months. Then, two weeks later, I had to roll into ‘Moana.’ So it was Mark Kerr and Maui. Big dudes.”

On knowing Kerr back in the 1990s: “I did. In the mid-90s. I started wrestling in ‘96 after my football career ended. In ‘97-‘98, whenever we wrestled in LA, we all went to the same gym. That’s where I met Mark, Coleman, Kevin Randleman, Don Frye. Legends. At the time, I was Rocky Maivia, and it wasn’t going well. I was getting booed. These guys? Fighting for Pride in Japan and making real money. I remember saying to Mark, ‘Hey man, if I ever want to talk to you about this stuff, is that okay?’ He said, ‘Absolutely.’ I was a jabroni, and he was like, ‘Good for you, kid.’ But what I didn’t know then was what he was struggling with — addiction, depression, shame. You look at him and think he’s on top of the world. But that’s the lesson: you never know what someone’s going through.”

On his message to people who feel like the world is on fire right now: “I’m happy to share something I’ve learned recently. My uncle said to me a couple of months ago: ‘It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.’ That stuck with me. And I’ll add something from Benny. He coined a term while we were filming: ‘radical empathy.’ If you can feel empathy for someone who looks invincible — like Mark Kerr — then you can feel it for anyone. And once you have that, the judging starts to go away. The noise dies down. That’s what I’ve been telling my daughter Simone — we’re going through something. I said, ‘It’s going to be okay. Let’s talk. We’ve got this.’”

On if he’ll ever run for president: “It’s wild, man. I’m always honored when people ask that. I love what I do. I love storytelling. But yeah… we’ll see.”